The Constitution is the supreme law of the Republic. Pre-independence statutes continue in force under Article 188 insofar as they are not inconsistent with the Constitution. Since EU accession in 2004, EU law has supremacy over domestic law, including in principle over conflicting constitutional provisions as adapted.
Section 29(1)(c) of the Courts of Justice Law 14/1960 is the hinge of Cyprus private law. In the absence of contrary constitutional or statutory provision, the courts apply the common law and the doctrines of equity. English decisions are not binding after independence, but they are treated as highly persuasive — especially where Cyprus has not spoken.
Cyprus contract law is a code, not an uncodified common-law residual. Cap. 149 is modelled on the Indian Contract Act 1872. Formation, vitiating factors, frustration (s.56), damages (s.73) and stipulated sums (s.74) are statutory. English cases illuminate the code; they do not replace it. Section 73 restates the Hadley v Baxendale remoteness idea in statutory form. Section 74 is the Indian-style penalty/liquidated damages provision — closer to a reasonableness enquiry than to the old English penalty rule.
Tort in Cyprus is codified. Cap. 148 creates named civil wrongs, including negligence (historically around Article 51). The English neighbour principle and Caparo three-stage test are used to fill the code, but the cause of action is statutory. Medical negligence is framed as a failure to meet the standard of the ordinary skilled practitioner, with the Republic vicariously liable for public-hospital staff.
Cap. 113 began as an English Companies Act 1948 transplant and has been heavily amended, including to implement EU company law. Separate legal personality is foundational. English authorities on veil-piercing (Prest), directors' duties, and unfair prejudice are cited daily in Nicosia, but always against the current consolidated Cap. 113 and any EU instrument that bites.
The 2023 Civil Procedure Rules replaced the old English-colonial rules with a modern code modelled on the English CPR (the Dyson-led reform). The overriding objective, active case management, and a more English interim-remedies grammar now apply. Pre-2023 Cyprus procedure cases must be used with care.
Cap. 6 is the statutory backbone of civil procedure, sitting alongside the Rules. Enforcement of judgments, certain time limits and structural provisions still live in the Law. Always check whether the point is in Cap. 6, the CPR, or both.
A Sale of Goods Act transplant. Implied conditions as to title, description, quality and sample, passing of property, and the classic seller/buyer remedies. English Sale of Goods cases (including The Hansa Nord and older House of Lords authorities) are routinely used to construe equivalent language.
Evidence is partly statutory (Cap. 9) and partly common-law. English authorities on legal advice privilege (Three Rivers), without-prejudice, and similar fact remain the working toolkit, subject to local statute and the Constitution (fair trial).
Cyprus criminal law is a code in the colonial/Indian tradition, not the English common-law of offences. English criminal cases are used for mens rea analogues and evidential principles, but the offence-creating provision is in Cap. 154 or a later statute (AML, corruption, cybercrime, etc.).
Cyprus land law is registration-based, not English unregistered title. Cap. 224 and the Lands and Surveys machinery are the spine. English land-law cases on leases, licences (Street v Mountford) and proprietary estoppel are used, but registered title and the specific Cyprus statutes come first. Occupied-area property is a separate, heavily Europeanised topic (Apostolides, Loizidou).
The CIT regime is a statutory, English-equity hybrid aimed at international wealth structuring. English trust cases (Boardman, Armitage v Nurse, Pitt v Holt, FHR) remain the language of fiduciary duties and tracing, read against the 1992 Law as amended.
The principal AML statute, EU-driven and frequently amended. It sits on top of the Criminal Code and the lawyers' professional regime. English POCA cases are comparative only; the charging and compliance analysis is local and European.
Modern limitation statute. Periods and starting points are statutory. English limitation cases (knowledge, deliberate concealment, standing) are persuasive on analogous wording, but the 2012 Law is the text that binds.
The Supreme Court held that the doctrine of necessity is part of the constitutional order of Cyprus. Measures that would otherwise be unconstitutional may be upheld if they are necessary, proportionate, and directed to preserving the state and the administration of justice in circumstances the Constitution did not contemplate.
From 1 July 2023 the old Supreme Court was split. A Court of Appeal sits at second instance (civil, criminal, administrative). Above it: a Supreme Court and a Supreme Constitutional Court, with third-instance jurisdiction. Specialised first-instance courts (Commercial, Admiralty, International Protection Administrative Court, Administrative Court, Family, Industrial Disputes, Rent Control) sit below. Hierarchy and citation practice changed; older 'Supreme Court' first-instance or appellate labels need translating into the new map.
Succession in Cyprus is statutory and still carries civilian forced-heirship ideas unfamiliar to English probate lawyers. Cap. 195, not the English Wills Act, is the starting point. EU Succession Regulation (650/2012) overlays cross-border estates.
The Cyprus GDPR companion statute. Substantive data-protection law is the GDPR itself (direct effect). Law 125(I)/2018 fills member-state options, the Commissioner's powers, and local procedure.
Damages for breach are those arising naturally (first limb) or those that may reasonably be supposed to have been in the contemplation of both parties, at the time of contracting, as the probable result of the breach (second limb).
Asquith LJ restated Hadley in the language of reasonable foreseeability. Ordinary loss of profits may be first-limb; exceptional lucrative contracts need second-limb knowledge.
A majority, on different reasonings, limited recovery of a follow-on fixture loss after late redelivery. Lord Hoffmann emphasised assumption of responsibility / the scope of the contractual duty, not raw foreseeability.
Lord Hoffmann's five principles: interpretation is the ascertainment of meaning which the document would convey to a reasonable person having all the background knowledge reasonably available to the parties. The matrix of fact is admissible; subjective intent and prior negotiations (as a general rule) are not.
Where language is capable of more than one meaning, the court is entitled to prefer the construction consistent with business common sense. It is not a licence to rewrite a clear clause.
The court must not invoke commercial common sense to undervalue the importance of the language. Natural meaning of clear words is not displaced because the bargain later looks imprudent.
Textualism and contextualism are not conflicting paradigms. Construction is a unitary exercise. The weight of text vs context depends on the nature, formality and quality of the drafting.
Terms implied in fact are a strict, after-construction exercise. Belize Telecom must not be read as collapsing implication into interpretation. Business efficacy and the officious bystander remain the tests. The term must be necessary, not merely reasonable.
The penalty rule survives, restated: a clause is penal if it is a secondary obligation which imposes a detriment out of all proportion to any legitimate interest of the innocent party in the enforcement of the primary obligation. Dunlop's old tests are not the whole law.
Diplock LJ: not every contractual term is a condition or a warranty. For innominate terms, the question is whether the breach deprived the innocent party of substantially the whole benefit of the contract.
There is no substantive doctrine of fundamental breach destroying exemption clauses. The question is one of construction: did the clause, properly construed, cover this breach?
The majority replaced the reliance rule in Tinsley v Milligan with a range-of-factors approach: purpose of the prohibition, relevant public policies, and whether denial of the claim would be a proportionate response.
No-oral-modification clauses are in general effective. Parties who agree that variations must be in writing are held to that. The consideration debate on part-payment (Foakes / Williams v Roffey / Selectmove) was noted but not decided.
Lord Atkin's neighbour principle: you must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour — persons so closely and directly affected that you ought to have them in contemplation.
For novel duties: foreseeability of damage, proximity, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty. Auditors of a public company did not owe a duty to a takeover bidder relying on the statutory accounts.
A duty can arise for negligent words where there is a special relationship / assumption of responsibility, subject to effective disclaimers. The bank's disclaimer succeeded on the facts.
Lord Goff: a claimant may sue in contract and tort concurrently where an assumption of responsibility exists. The contractual structure is relevant but does not automatically exclude tort.
Caparo is not a universal test. Where a duty is established (here, not to cause personal injury by positive negligent acts), apply it. Public-authority status does not confer a general immunity.
A doctor is not negligent if acting in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical opinion skilled in that art.
The doctor must take reasonable care to ensure the patient is aware of any material risks of injury and of any reasonable alternatives. Materiality is judged by whether a reasonable person in the patient's position would likely attach significance, or the doctor knows this patient would.
A company is a separate legal person from its shareholders, even where one person holds almost all the shares. Creditors of the company cannot, without more, go against the members.
Lord Sumption: true veil-piercing is a narrow evasion principle — where a person interposes a company to evade an existing legal obligation. Concealment is not piercing; the court looks through to the facts. On the facts the houses were held on resulting trust, so piercing was unnecessary.
English law rejects a general single-economic-unit doctrine. Subsidiaries are separate. A parent is not present in a jurisdiction merely because a subsidiary is, absent agency or the parent itself carrying on business there.
The company is the proper plaintiff for wrongs done to the company. Individual shareholders cannot generally sue. Exceptions (fraud on the minority, ultra vires, personal rights) developed around the rule; English law later statutory-ised derivative claims.
Outsiders dealing with a company may assume internal procedures have been complied with. They are not required to investigate the indoor management, subject to knowledge of irregularity.
A director who commits the tort of deceit is personally liable. There is no special company-law defence that he acted 'as the company'. Attribution and personal tortious liability are different questions.
Lord Diplock's framework for interim injunctions: (1) a serious question to be tried, not a mini-trial of the merits; (2) adequacy of damages for each side; (3) balance of convenience; (4) status quo as a tie-break. Special approaches exist for final relief, free speech, and mandatory injunctions.
The court may restrain a defendant from dissipating assets so as to frustrate enforcement of a future judgment. Later refinement: good arguable case, real risk of unjustified dissipation, balance of convenience, and (without notice) full and frank disclosure, plus the usual undertakings.
An exceptional without-notice order permitting entry to premises to inspect and preserve evidence where there is a grave danger of destruction. Extremely high duty of frankness; supervising solicitor practice in England.
A person mixed up in the wrongdoing of others, even innocently, may be ordered to disclose the identity of the wrongdoer. It is not a general discovery against a mere witness.
Legal advice privilege covers advice on what should prudently and sensibly be done in the relevant legal context — not only black-letter advice. It is still confined to the lawyer-client continuum.
Exclusive possession for a term at a rent is a lease, whatever the parties call it. Labels do not decide. Limited exceptions (service occupiers, friendship, etc.).
Fiduciaries who profit from information and opportunity obtained in that capacity must account, even if they acted in good faith and the trust benefited. A generous allowance for skill was made on the facts.
Millett LJ: a trustee exemption clause can exclude liability for negligence, even gross negligence, but cannot exclude the irreducible core of honesty and good faith.
A bribe or secret commission received by an agent is held on constructive trust for the principal. The principal has a proprietary claim, not merely a personal account.
EU law has supremacy over conflicting national law. A later national statute cannot override a Treaty obligation. Member-state courts must give effect to EU law.
The Treaty is a new legal order. Clear, precise, unconditional provisions can confer rights on individuals which national courts must protect.
A member state is liable in damages for failure to implement a directive where the directive confers rights, the content of those rights is identifiable, and there is a causal link. Later cases (Brasserie, Köbler) refined the 'sufficiently serious breach' condition.
National courts must have power to grant interim relief to protect EU rights, including by disapplying a conflicting national rule. Effectiveness of EU law requires it.
The suspension of the acquis in the areas where the government does not exercise effective control does not preclude a judgment of a court sitting in the government-controlled areas, concerning land in the north, from circulating under Brussels I. Public-policy refusal is narrowly construed.
A regulation of direct effect. Lawful bases in Art. 6, special category data in Art. 9, transfers in Chapter V, independent supervisory authorities. Member-state laws (in Cyprus, Law 125(I)/2018) only fill specified gaps.
A search engine is a controller of the personal data on its results pages. A data subject may request de-listing of search results against their name where the data is inadequate, irrelevant or excessive, balanced against the public interest in access.
Privacy Shield was invalid. SCCs remain valid in principle but the exporter must assess the third country and add supplementary measures where needed. Essential equivalence is the standard.
Turkey's responsibility under the Convention extends to northern Cyprus because of effective control. Denial of access to property can be a continuing violation of A1P1. The TRNC is not recognised as a state for these purposes.
A lawyer committed to prison for contempt by the same judges before whom the alleged contempt occurred. The Grand Chamber found a breach of Article 6 impartiality — the confusion of roles between complainant, witness, prosecutor and judge was structurally incompatible with a fair hearing.
English cases are not binding in Cyprus. They come in as residual common law and equity under s.29 of Law 14/1960, and as highly persuasive reasoning where a Cyprus code (Cap. 149, Cap. 148, Cap. 113) uses language drawn from English or Indian models. They do not import English statutes (UCTA, LA 1980, Companies Act 2006, POCA) unless Cyprus has enacted an equivalent. A clean submission: Cyprus text → Cyprus cases → English cases as persuasive, with a sentence on why the local court should follow them. Never present a Weekly Law Report as if it were a CLR.